Tata group makes offer for a stake in Bisleri International: Report

Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

The Tata group has made an offer for a stake in India's largest packaged water company Bisleri International, The Economic Times reported on September 12 citing executives aware of the development.

"The Tata group has made the offer to Bisleri for a stake acquisition which it wants to scale up eventually," one of the executives said.

"This would give the Tatas a massive foothold in packaged drinking water across the entry-level, mid-segment, and premium packaged water categories, and a ready go-to-market network across retail stores, chemist channels, institutional channels, including hotels, restaurants and airports, besides bulk-water delivery, since Bisleri mineral water leads across each of these channels," the executive told ET.

The report has also attributed the stake dilution to succession planning by Bisleri owner Ramesh Chauhan.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

According to the official website, Bisleri has more than 150 manufacturing plants and a network of over 4,000 distributors with 5,000 trucks across India.

The size of the packaged water market in the country is estimated at Rs 20,000 crore, of which 60 percent is unorganised.

Bisleri owns 32 percent of the organised market.

It has its own app Bisleri@Doorstep to deliver products directly to consumers, including bulk 20-litre packs as well as smaller bottles starting from 250 ml to 1 litre.